


anger

by Quillium



Series: at least the war is over [4]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 10:30:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17579180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quillium/pseuds/Quillium
Summary: May buries her face in his hair, “You can change one person. Teach one person. Malice is sometimes ignorance.”“So I just—talk about it? That’s all I can do?”ORPeter is angry.





	anger

**Author's Note:**

> I dislike this fic because I can't quite capture everything. I wrote it when I was mad and it's a bit incoherent due to that, so I do apologize in advance. It doesn't have any good conclusion, but I would like to hear your thoughts about this, so if you'd like to discuss or comment, I would be grateful.

Peter doesn’t like anger.

Sure, he can justify it. He can understand it. He gets the biological nuances (to an extent). He gets that emotions are all necessary, all useful, and he _understands_ except he doesn’t.

Anger, Peter has always thought, was a bit unnecessary.

It’s like sadness or panic or something in between, something that makes his ears ring and his chest tight and there is an itch on the soles of his feet to _go_ and _do something about it_.

And maybe that’s _okay_ , but Peter doesn’t like being motivated by something like this, doesn’t like being motivated by seeing red, he prefers being good for the sake of good or being productive because of the end product, or—not anger.

Ben and May, growing up, weren’t very angry people. They were the opposite, really. When Ben got angry, it was always because of something justified—about people getting hurt, about cruelty, ignorance, things that Peter understood. And it never scared him. Ben never yelled or anything, just talked with May in low voices in the kitchen, when Peter was in bed, halfway to falling asleep.

So Peter grows up with examples of good use of anger. He grows up with people who don’t get angry much, and when they do, they could _control_ it.

So Peter doesn’t quite know what to do, _how_ to control the anger that’s swelling in his chest right now, tight in his throat and burning in his lungs.

It’s something that built up without him realizing it, something like a dam breaking except the water doesn’t know where to go, so it hangs, suspended, while he tries to figure out where and how to direct it.

“It isn’t fair,” he says to MJ, fists at his sides at lunch while she tells him about the Ocoee massacre.

“Yeah, well,” MJ locks her jaw, “The world’s not fair, what else is new.”

“It’s dumb,” Ned agrees after school as he takes the papers from Peter’s hands, “We’re trying to change it.”

“People have been trying to change things over the history of the world,” Flash says when Peter raises the topic before practice. He scowls at his shoes, “We keep thinking that we’re almost there, but it’s been over two thousand years and people are still fucked up.”

It’s a— _god_. He wishes that he could describe it, put it into words. Quantify this feeling somehow, measure it in a flask and test it. Get rid of it, somehow.

“Sometimes,” May says, her chin in his hair, her fingers on the back of his neck, “The world isn’t fair. And everything sucks. And you want desperately, terribly, to change it. But you can’t. Not all of it. One person can’t change the whole world.”

“It isn’t fair,” Peter says into her collarbones, and tries not stupidly childish he sounds.

“No,” May agrees, sadly. “It isn’t. You can’t change the world, and sometimes you have to be okay with that. Focus on one person. Just one person. So long as one person knows the difference between right and wrong, it’s okay. And we—we’re making progress. We don’t have slaves anymore. The LGBT community has a voice. It seems stupidly slow and small but it’s progress.”

“People are still being sexist and racist and all the other dumb things, though,” Peter says, “And they _always_ have. What if it never ends?”

May buries her face in his hair, “You can change one person. Teach one person. Malice is sometimes ignorance.”

“So I just—talk about it? That’s all I can do?”

“You can keep yourself from becoming hateful,” May says wearily, “Make sure you never turn into that awful person. Stay good and kind.”

“It’s hard,” Peter says, anger and frustration and helplessness in his chest.

“I know,” May says.

It burns in his throat. A desire for—for _more_. For better.

“That’s—that’s it? Don’t become a malicious person and help one person at a time?”

She kisses his forehead and sighs.

“No matter how hard you try,” Tony says, a screwdriver between his teeth, wire beneath his fingers, a bandaid over his knuckles, “You can’t change people. People have got to want to change themselves. You can tell them the truth. Show them the truth. But in the end—it’s up to them.”

“I wish—“ Peter stares at his program, lines of text on a white background, and closes it. He can’t concentrate on it properly, not today. “I always thought that people were supposed to be good, at their core. Everyone I know is always working to be better. Striving to be the best versions of themselves that they can be.”

“People are—complicated,” Tony says, quietly, and ruffles Peter’s hair, “They aren’t something you can ever fully understand.”

Peter watches Tony work and something clicks.

It isn’t that he isn’t still angry. He is. It makes him so mad, seeing bad things happen.

It isn’t that he’s satisfied with the world.

But the feeling fades when he listens to MJ talk about feminism. When he watches Tony on TV, talking about changing the world for the better. When May cards her fingers through his hair.

The anger’s still there. He doesn’t quite know what to do about it.

But he knows that there’s good in the world. And for now—for now, he supposes, that will have to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Growing up, I was an angry kid. So when I was older, that became everything that I avoided. Anger, to me, was the one thing that I absolutely could not have. But then I learned about so many terrible things in the past and present. And because I avoided anger for so long, I didn't know how to properly resolve it. So, you get a fic. Hopefully something resonated, and if not, hopefully it was somewhat entertaining for all that it's short as heck.


End file.
